LANGUAGE MYTHS

LANGUAGE MYTH 3

Written By Jean Aitchison

“The Media are Ruining English”

Introduction

“English is sick”

The MEDIA

“Idiots on the radio and television”

David Crystal’s Top Twenty Complaints

Shakespeare did it!

“You and me” Vs. “You and I”

Lady Thatcher did it!

2 Prominent Fallacies about MEDIA

Dirty Fingernails Fallacy & Garbage Heap Fallacy

Language Change TheoriesMetamorphosis

Tadpole to frog Model

Language Change TheoriesCompetition

Young Cuckoo Model

Examples of Cuckoo modelLexicon

“Gay” and “Wimp”

Cuckoo Model

Emergence of Prefix- MINI

Prefix- MINI

PhonologyPronunciation

kilOmetrekilometre

PhonologyPronunciation

CON-troversycon-TROV-ersy

Young Cuckoos cannot Imbalance Language

Constantly regulates itself

“Language, like a thermostat”

THE GARBAGE HEAP FALLACY

“Journalism is junk writing”

Aitchison says… Writing for the press is a demanding

skill Such writing requires training and skill It captures and sustains the attention

of the readers

COMPARE THESE TWO EXCERPTS:

“Nothing much has happened except to the president who has been imprisoned in his own palace by revolutionay junta…they say he is drunk when his children try to see him but governess says most unusual. Lovely spring weather.”

And….

“Up to six people were feared dead and sixty injured yesterday after a cargo ship lost power and ploughed into a busy shopping mall.”

Renown authors:

George Orwell’s six rules of effective journalism

And…

Joel Chandler Harris on journalism

THANK YOU FOR LISTENING…

Reference:

.

Aitchison, Jean. “The Media are Ruining English”. Language Myths. Ed. Laurie Bauer and Peter Trudghill. England: Penguin Books, 1998. 15-21. Print.